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FAQs: A Suggested Minimal Digest Format
Section - 4. What's a Section, and How is it Formatted?

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A "section" is merely a block of text.  In many FAQs they are simply
the introduction paragraph, the table of contents, and each question
and answer.  Through the use of digest format, most newsreaders can
skip from section to section using the convention presented here, and
more sophisticated packages can hypertext them.

A "section" consists of:

	<blank line>
	<string of 30 hyphens>
	<blank line>
	Subject: <subject line>
	<additional optional RFC822-like headers>
	<blank line>
	<text>

Note that the string of hyphens and "Subject:" must start in column one.
"Subject:" has one space or tab between it and the subject line.  If you have
to put "Subject:" in and don't want it interpreted as a section header, just
make sure that it isn't in column one (just like above).  If your subject
line is too wide to fit in 80 columns, you can continue it onto the next
lines, with whitespace at the beginning of the following lines.  Example:

	Subject: this is a long........
		subject line

The subject can be any arbitrary string of text.  You may wish to use
a numbering scheme, for it makes it easier for your readers to "grep"
down to the precise section they want.

You can place additional RFC-like headers after the Subject, such as
"From:", "Date:" etc.  Again, these headers should start in column
one.  There should be no blank lines in the entire set of headers
in a section.

The text is free format ASCII and may be formatted any way you wish.

Current FAQ maintainers take note: if you're already using a consistent
format for your FAQ, converting to this format will often require only
one or two global edit commands.



Top Document: FAQs: A Suggested Minimal Digest Format
Previous Document: 3. What Should the Overall FAQ Look Like?
Next Document: 5. What is the Table of Contents Format?

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Last Update March 27 2014 @ 02:11 PM